The invention relates generally to handheld electronic devices and, more particularly, to a handheld electronic device having an improved phone call log. The invention also relates to a method of logging and displaying information relating to phone calls placed with and received or missed by a handheld electronic device.
Numerous types of handheld electronic devices are known. Examples of such handheld electronic devices include, for instance, personal data assistants (PDAs), handheld computers, two-way pagers, cellular telephones, and the like. Such handheld electronic devices are generally intended to be portable and thus are relatively small. Many handheld electronic devices also feature wireless communication capability, although many such handheld electronic devices are stand-alone devices that are functional without communication with other devices.
Many handheld electronic devices include cellular telephone functionality. Such devices often store a log of phone calls placed, received and/or missed by the device in what is commonly referred to as a call log. Information contained in the call log may be selectively accessed by and displayed to the user of the handheld electronic device. Such information is useful to the user to, among other things, help to recall if and when a particular phone call was placed, received, or missed, and to access information about the call such as, for example, the associated telephone number or the name, address or email address of the person associated with the call.
Prior art call logs typically display the phone call information to the user chronologically based on the time and date associated with each call, usually beginning with the most recent call first. Some prior art call logs group and display the logged calls based on the category in which the call falls, i.e., a missed call, a received called, or a placed call. In this case, the calls are still typically displayed chronologically. No effort has been made, however, in the known prior art to group or link together all logged calls that are associated with the same originating or dialed phone number or contact person so that the user of the handheld electronic device can have a contact based view of phone call history. Thus, with known prior art call logs, if a user is interested in knowing the history of calls associated with a particular originating or dialed phone number or contact person, the user must manually search through the chronologically organized call log for all entries for that phone number or contact person.